Quite by coincidence, Clayton Richard was pitching for the Padres that night. Of the four pitchers the Chicago White Sox traded to San Diego for Jake Peavy in midseason of 2009, Richard is the only one still with San Diego.

Only now, it was 2012 and Peavy was in a friend’s home, watching Richard pitch against the Washington Nationals on April 24. Peavy’s own work was done — he’d improved his record to 3-0 and lowered his ERA to 1.88 in pitching the Sox to a win at Oakland the night before — so he secretly flew from the Bay Area to San Diego to catch a Padres game on TV with an old buddy.

Darrel Akerfelds, aka, “Ak.”

“Cool part was, Hatch (Padres bullpen catcher Justin Hatcher) had taken a cellphone out to the ’pen, putting it where he and Ak could text each other back and forth as the game went on,” said Peavy. “I can’t even tell you how important that was to Ak, to be connected to the bullpen and the game like that.”

The connection between the Padres and Akerfelds — still their bullpen coach — goes to a place so deep that it cannot be reached even by the pancreatic cancer that’s been ravaging his body over the past 18 months. The announcement that Jimmy Jones had been summoned from Double-A to take over Akerfelds’ duties on an interim basis brought his plight back to public mind, but you also get the sense that it’s never been absent from the pitching staff this season.

Traded a couple of weeks ago to the Los Angeles Angels after 10 years in the Padres system, happy-go-lucky relief pitcher Ernesto Frieri asked about Akerfelds’ waning health, clutched at a chair with both hands and choked back the emotion. In the visiting clubhouse of the same Anaheim ballpark, meanwhile, Peavy talked about that stolen, treasured evening with Akerfelds last month. Just a couple of “the boys,” to use Peavy’s vernacular.

“I love that guy,” said Peavy. “We’d been together so long. Ak was already out there when I came to the big leagues (in 2002). Bals (pitching coach Darren Balsley) got there in ’03. You have to understand. I had some buddies on the team in San Diego — Chris Young, Hoffy — but we had so much player turnover going on that I got closer with the coaching staff. When we got to a city, I went to dinner with Ak and Bals. They were the constants in my 8½ years there, close, close friends. That staff was family to me.

“There’s nobody in baseball that compares to Ak. Fierce. Fiery. Tough. And the amount of preparation, the homework he did. He knew everything about you, your guys, the other guys, things he probably wasn’t even supposed to know because that was somebody else’s job. To have him battle something like this at such a young age (49) … it’s just real hard, man.”

While the White Sox were in Southern California, Peavy was arranging a benefit for research in the fight against pancreatic cancer, among the most aggressive and lethal forms of the disease. The winner of a “Day With Jake Peavy” raffle, along with three people of his or her choice, will be hosted by the pitcher and given carte blanche treatment during the interleague series between the White Sox and Chicago Cubs at U.S. Cellular Field next month.

As it happens, Peavy will pitch against the Cubs today at Wrigley Field, a place he visited regularly as perhaps the ace of aces in Padres history. His own struggles since the trade to Chicago and return to form in 2012 were the original aim of this column, an approach Peavy quickly and deftly turned into a talk about Akerfelds and what he’d meant to Peavy.

Certainly, too, Peavy was loath to go on and on about his own recovery from health issues when his friend was dealing with something so much more serious. But, fact is, Peavy’s comeback from various injuries and surgery is really the comeback of the year so far in baseball.

“I’m in an unbelievable place as far as my career goes,” he said. “I truly don’t take anything for granted. I know what it’s like to be on top of the mountain. I know what it’s like to be in the lowest of lows, thinking this game may be taken away from you.”

The top of the mountain in terms of personal accomplishment was 2007, the rare Triple Crown of pitching, the unanimous Cy Young Award. After a few starts that made it look like he’d be just as dominant in the American League, the mountain crumbled and Peavy tumbled, rock bottom being the 2010 game where he walked off the field with a lat muscle torn away from the bone in his back.

You don’t, or shouldn’t, expect to come back from a re-attachment procedure any faster than Tommy John surgery. Peavy pitched on and endured the two worst two seasons of his career, based on his ERAs over 4.60 in ’10 and ’11. He only made 19 appearances last year, including one game out of the bullpen.

“It’s tough when you think you can play on pain medication, have a shot, and then you go out there and you’re not nearly the person you once were,” said Peavy. “It’s hard to play the game that way.”

Know this, however. Through all that, Peavy posted a winning record for the White Sox, a 17-13 mark if you throw in the first few months after the trade from San Diego. During spring training, Balsley said he had a feeling that Peavy was back on the verge of greatness, a prophecy that Peavy has fulfilled with his 4-1 record and 2.65 ERA.

Two of Peavy’s eight starts in 2012 have been complete games, back to back, one a shutout of the A’s and the other a 1-0 loss to the Boston Red Sox. With nine walks and 48 strikeouts in 57 innings, his WHIP of 0.92 is better than the majors-best 1.06 he had in ’07. Peavy’s pitching in a much smaller home ballpark, facing fully loaded AL lineups almost every time out, and loving it.

“A couple of guys have asked me if I’ve reinvented myself,” said Peavy. “I’m not doing anything any different than I was when San Diego saw me all those years. I don’t know any different. You come back and try new things, try to learn to throw different ways, but I’m doing the same stuff that I was successful with. Why would I not want to pitch that way?”